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Author Topic: Buchenwald
lagatta
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Babbler # 2534

posted 10 April 2005 05:20 PM      Profile for lagatta     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
60th anniversary of liberation ceremonies. http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1548119,00.html
From: Se non ora, quando? | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 10 April 2005 07:23 PM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
An old book which is a great description of the courage and intrigue it took to try and get word to the Allied forces about what was being built at Buchenwald (the control systems for the V-2 rockets) is Block 26: Sabotage at Buchenwald.
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Ethical Redneck
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posted 10 April 2005 11:04 PM      Profile for Ethical Redneck     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Built in part by the slave labour at that concentration camp, most of whom were put to death afterward.
From: Deep in the Rockies | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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Babbler # 5594

posted 11 April 2005 03:21 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
In August 1944, Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer ruled that the automotive industry was essential to the German war effort and decided to make 12,000 concentration camp inmates available to ensure that the industry produced up to its maximal capacity. Following a meeting between Robert Schmidt and the head of the German Automotive Industry Economic Group in August, the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp drew up a list of prisoners to be sent to work at Ford- Werke. ... Right through to the end of the war, Buchenwald prisoners would continue to be dispatched to the Cologne plant.
...
Shortly before the government seized the assets of the Union Banking Corporation, in fact, it had also seized American-held assets of the Hamburg-Amerika Line under the Trading With the Enemy Act. A few weeks after the government seized Bush's shares in Union Banking, it seized the assets of three other Nazi front companies whose investments were handled by Bush-the Holland-American Trading Corporation, the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation, and the Silesian-American Corporation. The paper trail indicated that the bulk of Prescott Bush's financial empire was being operated on behalf of Nazi Germany.

Business as Usual

[ 11 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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Babbler # 478

posted 11 April 2005 04:12 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There's a well-done essay on this a.m.'s G&M Facts and Arguments page by a daughter of a survivor of Buchenwald. Her dad was also 15 at liberation, is 75 now and apparently thriving.

If I knew before, I had forgotten that Buchenwald was so close to Weimar. Och, such a historical and cultural travesty for Germans as well -- Weimar was Goethe's home, and a centre for the German Aufklarung (Enlightenment).


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 11 April 2005 04:27 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I was just reading about the takeover of Weimar by communists in 1918 and the social democrat movement in Germany. It was no surprise then that Buchenwald and Dauchau would be prisons for socialists, communists, gays etc. Adolf's squawking oratories were filled with hatred for socialists, communists and Jews who were "ruining his beloved Germany."
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
DrConway
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posted 23 July 2005 02:12 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bump. I'm re-reading the book I mentioned earlier, and one thing that intrigues me is that the German Communists had managed to infiltrate the hierarchy of the kapos and other camp administrative positions, and once there, acted just like any other kapo, i.e. grabbing what you can for yourself and rationalizing it any which way. Now, in fairness, the author of the book (who was a Frenchman interned at Buchenwald) did allow that the camp's heavy Communist infiltration did mean that by the standards of other KZs in Germany, Buchenwald was run slightly less sadistically.

I highly doubt that the distinction mattered much to the people in the camps at the time, though.


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 23 July 2005 03:37 AM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
But were they really acting as CP or were they turned CP who tried to turn again at the end of the war, or is the testimony stronger than that?
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Zaklamont
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posted 23 July 2005 04:47 AM      Profile for Zaklamont        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
re: Buchenwald, my father was liberated there.

He spent 2 years in Auschwitz because he was arrested by the French Gestapo in Toulouse for his Resistance activities and then sent off to
Poland from the Drancy French concentration camp (located in the Paris area). He ended up in Buchenwald after a forced march in the winter months, starting from Auschwitz IV (Blechammer). This horrible march was engineered because Allied bombers began to hit Auschwitz satellite camps , involved in heavy industrial works (eg. slave labourers worked for German Corporations like Siemens).

The Resistance activities he was involved in was helping downed Allied fliers to escape into Spain from southern France. At that time, downed Allied fliers were immediately sent to death camps by Hitler as revenge for carpet bombings of German cities. So, my father helped to save lives, including the lives of RCAF fliers. Unfortunately, his own life was nearly destroyed arising from his experiences in the Auschwitz death camp. Apart from the deep emotional trauma of the experience, he suffered from stomach ulcers arising from his eating grass to overcome hunger and starvation.

It's not a lot to ask the Canadian Government (Department of Veterans Affairs) to honour French WW II Resisters for rescuing Canadians from a horrible fate, at , for example, Remembrance Day Ceremonies, or at other fora. Already an NFB documentary was made on Canadian fliers who ended up in death camps; so it's not particularly a big secret for those who should know better.

I have already once approached Veterans Affairs with no response on this matter. Recently I approached Victor Rabinovitch , head of the War Museum , about it. He felt it was an issue deserving action, but, so far, he has taken no initiative.

I have every intention of continuing my efforts in this matter, as it is a way of remembering... .


From: Ottawa Ontario | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged

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